Council leaders have agreed to ask the public about proposals to save £9m in the next few years, including charging for garden waste and higher parking fees.

Redcar and Cleveland Council aims to save millions by reviewing its services and consider combining some teams and services. It also proposes higher fees and charges, some new fees and a council tax rise of almost five per cent next year.

The council’s cabinet has approved going out to consultation with the proposals for next year’s budget, financial plans until 2029, investment programme, a 2.99 per cent council tax rise and two per cent increase to the adult social care precept. It wants to hear what people think of the proposals until the new year, and the final budget will be finalised next January and presented to the cabinet and council for approval in February.

The authority aims to save £9.2m over the next five years, with many savings “front-loaded into next year” because of financial pressures. A total of £8.1m is proposed to be saved in the next financial year of 2024 to 2025.

It plans to save £2m with a “council-wide management of vacancies, overtime and agency spend”, and another £1m by reviewing services “to consolidate teams or services where they may be similarities or synergies”.

More income is expected to come in from proposed fees and charges – some £960,000 next year and hundreds of thousands more in the coming years. The council proposes to introduce 13 new fees and four updated or revised fees.

Garden waste collection, currently free, will be charged under the plans from April 2024. An annual subscription service is proposed with a £40 charge for collecting one bin fortnightly, £20 for more bins.

Fees will be added for “affordable” small marriage or civil partnership ceremonies at Redcar Civic Centre, cemeteries are set to introduce two new fees for family search and £600 for a new 20-year grave space, and a fee will be brought in for temporary traffic lights. The price of collecting bulky waste will go up to £20 and £40 depending on the number of items, amid the “spiralling cost of waste disposal”.

Parking fees, except for disabled blue badges, are to rise along with a host of charges from the household waste recycling centre and wheelie bin replacement to cemeteries, skips, scaffolding, advertising, allotments, room hire, pavement cafes, scrap metal licences, library fines, photocopying, Saltburn chalets and wedding photography on Saltburn Pier.

The council wants to save more than £100,000 by “optimising opening hours” and “considering peak times” at Kirkleatham Museum and Dunsdale Waste Recycling Centre, and another £150,000 with a car parking strategy.

It aims to save more than £1.7m by reviewing revenue policy, community development and health improvement services, funding for the planning, development and and housing strategy team and “optimising funding arrangements for smoking cessation services”.

It had already planned savings from February this year on administration costs, office and service accommodation, reviewing library services and youth and community centres, reducing the number of buildings used for family hubs services from 12 to eight, savings in adult social care and means testing for discretionary social services, potential changes to policy on early-years and post-16 people with special educational needs, home to school transport savings and mobile phone contracts.

The council says it needs to make the savings in the midst of financial challenges including high inflation, higher interest rates for borrowing, pay increases, energy, fuel, labour, construction and other costs, pressure on social care spending, more children in care, and “challenging” amounts of funding given by central government, with the council unlikely to find out how much money it will get until the week before Christmas.

The council’s latest report says: “Left unmitigated the pressures next year would significantly deplete reserves, reducing the council’s financial resilience to a dangerously low level and leaving an unsustainable financial position still to be resolved.”

It proposes to invest almost £39.5m in services over the next five years, including children in care, children with disabilities, adult social care, home to school transport, waste, roads and environmental services. A £177m capital investment programme is also proposed including IT, replacing old vehicles, building maintenance, roads, schools, disabled adaptations for homes, local children’s care placements, a new swimming baths at Eston and town regeneration with funds including levelling up money.